Say You'll Haunt Me
by TrenchcoatsAreSexy
Summary: Amber comes back as an angel to help House and Wilson get along again... But things may be easier said than done.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any House characters. Title is from the song of the same name by Stone Sour, © 2010 Roadrunner Records.

Chapter One: Highway to PPTH

There was a certain amount of irony to it. Of all the things people had called Amber throughout her lifetime, "angel" had not ever been one of them. But here she was, long fluffy white wings matching quite perfectly with her silky blonde hair, and as she stuck one foot over the New Jersey Transit train turnstile, she thought to herself that she didn't totally mind the gig she had been given. _Except for how awkward these damn wings are,_ she added as an afterthought. She wondered if they were retractable, and figured out a moment later that unfortunately, they were not.

Even worse, she was starting to get some extremely strange looks, as she walked from the platform into the open door for the train. The sooner she found Wilson and did what she needed to do, the better.

"What you wearin'?" a tall, bronze-skinned man inquired, giving Amber a look that she assumed was meant to be flirtatious but was, instead, all sorts of creepy.

"Wings," Amber retorted. "I'm in a traveling production of _Jesus Christ Superstar_."

Luckily, her stop was next, and she stepped gingerly on to the platform as she sighed. How the hell was she supposed to announce herself to Wilson? There really was no easy way to tell someone that you were their dead girlfriend, coming back to help them out so they didn't ruin their relationship with their best friend.

She was knocked out of her thoughts by a rough nudge – a man had just banged into her, a tall blonde with a dusty beard and tract marks all over his arms. _Drug addict,_ she thought disgustedly. _Why me? Why today?_

"Excuse me," the blonde murmured under his breath, and she turned to say something to him, some retort, and then thought better of it. After all, her boss – or supervisor, or whatever she wanted to call him – for this jaunt in purgatory was a rock musician who'd passed away of a drug overdose. Some kind of opiate – she couldn't remember which one, and he didn't like to talk about it. Sweet guy, though. Such a shame.

So she guessed that the man who'd just bumped into her could get off without her saying something nasty to him. She was on a mission, after all, and she should try and be as discreet as possible – _not quite as easy as it seems when one is walking around with huge fluffy white wings._

Amber found herself at a crossroads, and she stopped. At first she wasn't quite sure why, just that her feet seemed to have willed themselves to stand in place at this downturn of the concrete – _a handicap ramp,_ she figured, as she hung half-on, half-off of it.

She gazed up, her eyes following a metal railing that'd been painted a dark green, forest green, maybe. At the top of the railing was a long wide metal sign with curved edges, an orange stripe on top of a pink stripe and on top of those, an illustration of a little blue figure with one leg raised, next to a crude rendering of a vehicle of some sort.

_Bus stop,_ Amber thought wryly. _I need to take the bus._

She'd thought about it before she'd got there, and she'd hoped that maybe she could just take the train and walk – but her taste for walking while getting these bizarre stares was running out. She could take a cab – but that'd be even worse, with the luck she would end up with some creepy old guy who'd spend the entire time trying to hit on her and making crappy jokes about whether she'd fallen from Heaven.

_No, asshole,_ she could picture herself retorting, _I've fallen from Purgatory. Get it right. _

The 600 bus pulled up, and Amber's thoughts of going for a cab were brushed to the side. _How would I pay for it, anyway?_ she wondered, _considering I've only been given what… _Amber checked her pockets as the door opened. _Six dollars and fifty cents. That won't get me very far. _She stepped on to the step of the bus and grabbed the metal handle, pulling herself up – something she'd done so many times before in her life, just different buses, different towns but they'd never held this sense of foreboding before.

She made her way to the back, getting caught in the aisle several times, and sat down, gazing out at the wondrous streets of Princeton where she'd lived… Had it been only a few months ago? It felt like years.

She had to figure out what she'd say to Wilson, and what she'd say to House. Wilson would likely be more easy to convince – House would assume he was having some kind of psychotic symptom, and the possibility of him trying to perform brain surgery on himself was a definite risk. She'd go to Wilson first – that's where the problem was, after all, really. She didn't even really need to go to House.

Then again, that's what the rules had said, that's what her boss had told her: _Get House and Wilson back together. _And then the more ominous, _Stop Wilson from doing what he's about to do. _

Her blood ran cold at that, but she didn't have time to consider what it must mean. A man had sat down next to her, a man in his mid-sixties, and he'd asked her what stop to get off at.

"Oh, right down this next road," Amber replied brusquely. _Don't ever answer their questions,_ she thought to herself, _hasn't that always been my rule?_

"Oh, that's good, young lady," the man replied. "I always want to know what bus I'm on. It'd be bad if I didn't know, then I'd get lost! Are you married?"

_For exactly this reason. _

"Yeah, I am," Amber replied, turning her head. _Maybe that'll get rid of him._

"What's your husband's name? You're a pretty girl."

_Or… maybe not._

This whole angel thing was turning out to be a lot harder than it seemed in the movies…


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Revenge

"House." Wilson's voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and House looked up from his desk, which he's been staring at for the past hour. He vaguely remembered that there was something he ought to do but he couldn't remember quite what it is and even more he didn't care. He failed his friend, his only friend – Wilson hated him, what's the point? Maybe the DBS had fried his brain because that was all that was stuck in his head, over and over, like a record with a groove worn down that bit too much.

"Wilson," House whispered, looking across at his friend, at the lines of pain etched in his face. "I'm sorry."

"What for, exactly?" Wilson fired back, taking a step forward. It took all of House's will to not flinch at that tone, so foreign to Wilson's gentle voice. He hated that it had taken something he did to bring it out. "For destroying my life, yet again? For killing the one person I truly care about?" House swallowed, looking at Wilson, his shattered heart showing in his eyes. He hadn't hoped for anything better, knew he didn't deserve it. But what was the point in being here without Wilson, without his friend, his confidante? He could make new friends – no, no he couldn't.

House's head was spinning and it ached as he stood up and looked at Wilson. He'd been warned that brain damage was possible from DBS, even death was possible, and his skull had been cracked open already – he wondered if maybe he was already suffering from his brain falling apart. Maybe none of this was actually happening and Wilson's anger was just part of an incredibly fucked up nightmare. Possibly, one that was occurring while he was dying – which was a thought that didn't really help his spirits much.

"For everything," he replied, looking down; how could he meet Wilson's eyes?

"That's not really going to cut it, House," Wilson continued, taking a few more steps forward. House rose in his seat; this was not good, not good at all – he knew that much. He'd rarely ever seen Wilson with this look in his eyes; it had never been at him but it had never been good.

Wilson glared daggers at House; he was still reeling from the reality that Amber was gone, and House was to blame. He tried to remind himself that House wasn't, not really – _it was an accident, it could have happened anyhow, it's not House's fault…_ But then that was even more painful because then there was no reason. _No reason. _

So it was easier to write Amber's death off as another consequence of House's runaway ego and rampant disregard for anyone else. If he hadn't been so fucking stubborn and insisted on taking the bus after Amber had driven out in the middle of the damn night for his drunk ass…

_Then she would still be alive._

That was Wilson's story and he was sticking to it. As many times as he'd told his patients that there was nothing they could have done, most of the time there was – not smoked or drank or exposed themselves to carcinogens and… But this time, this was House's doing. There was something House could have done.

Not been Greg fucking House for ten minutes of his life. It would have resulted in countless years of Amber's.

Wilson took another step forward.

"Do you think that any number of fucking sorries will bring her back?" he whispered, deathly calm, leaning forward to be nose-to-nose with House. "Do you _fucking_ think I care about your 'I'm sorry'?" Now, he was screaming, and House flinched back, letting out what was nearly a yelp. Somehow, the flinch made Wilson all the more angry – how _dare_ House act like some fucking innocent victim after what Wilson had just been through!

Before Wilson really realized what he was doing – before his brain connected and thought _oh fuck, this is a really very bad idea_ and _what the hell am I doing_? – his fist connected with House's face and the diagnostician had fallen back in his chair. He stared at Wilson in shock for moments – that seemed like hours.

Wilson was staring back at House in shock, too, and he lowered his hand, looking at the blood that had appeared on his fist. _Whose blood? I don't understand…_

Wilson had punched his best friend, his friend who had possibly suffered brain damage and his friend who'd just risked his life to try and save Wilson's girlfriend. But he'd also punched the man whose carelessness had taken away the only woman he ever felt he could be truly happy with.

He didn't know how to feel. He felt nothing. Or maybe curiosity. Wilson hadn't punched someone in a long, long time – maybe not since that night when he'd met House. _Ironic. _

"Stay away from me, House," he growled. "I'm done with you."

"Please." The word came out of House's mouth before he'd managed to process it or stop himself from saying it, and he hated the broken, pleading tone that it had come out with. House's nose began to ache acutely, as if the nerve endings had only just now remembered that House had been punched in the face.

"Shut up," Wilson growled, and he lashed out again, shoving him this time, losing the energy or the sadistic streak necessary to punch. But maybe that was wrong, because his shove was harder than the punch and it sent House spiraling backwards into the wall, hitting his cracked skull against the white paint.

He gasped and turned, trying not to show how much the sickening crack he heard shook him. He was supposed to be pissed, show House how unforgivable it all was, but not crack his head open.

"You okay?" he mumbled, swallowing. House put a hand to his head, shocked again, and nodded.

"I'll leave you alone," he whispered. "Just don't hit me again."

Wilson turned and walked out of House's office as quickly as he possibly could; he didn't trust himself to look back.


End file.
